<< Haunted - ADONA >>
Demetra chuckled under her breath, grabbing a pinch of a curious, matte, chalky substance and casually tossed it over his left shoulder.
He flinched away from the sudden action, a stark reminder that he shouldn't lower his guard around a Witch, no matter what Katesch might have said about their neutrality.
"What the f-" Kai spluttered, his words dying in his throat when his eyes caught the flutter of wings shifting just outside of his range of vision.
Dark and tattered, they flapped noiselessly in the air behind him, but each time that he tried to fully turn his head over his shoulder to catch sight of it, it would move with him, always hovering just a little too far to see.
This resulted in Kai turning sharply in circles like a drunken dance and Demetra let out a bark of laughter, "Pfft! You won't catch it fool. Epi's aren't meant to be seen with human eyes." She tapped against her own with a crooked finger before turning away from him once more to pull a few more items out of the jumbled mess of her dusty hovel.
Kai stopped spinning and attempted to ignore the persistent fluttering from the corner of his eye, but it was swiftly and increasingly irritating him to the edge of insanity, "Ok. Do something about this too, please? If this goes on much longer I'm going to claw my damn eye out." He mumbled, darkly.
Demetra snorted, handing him a leather pouch tied with a purple, velvet ribbon, "Take one of these before you sleep each night. They might make you feel a little strange but it will give you a night of dreamless sleep. After a week or so, the Epi will lose interest and leave you be."
"I'm not going to see this thing for a whole week am I?" Kai pointed at the elusive flapping at the corner of his vision and Demetra smirked.
"No, of course not. It will wear off in a few moments."
He breathed a quiet sigh of relief and then eyed the other item in her hand.
A single long feather of a startling, pure, luminescent white.
Kai's hazel eyes widened in wonder, "Is that what I think it is?" He pointed.
The Witch grinned, wrapping it around the twisted piece of birch and holding it out towards him.
"Go to the edge of the forest, there's a small clearing there with an altar to one of the Gods. When you reach it, snap the branch and Uriel will answer it. However, make sure to tell him that Katesch asked for this, I don't want him to think that I'm abusing our arrangement." She warned, only releasing her hold on the branch when Kai nodded in agreement.
He ran his finger along the impossibly soft, pure feather for a long moment and then frowned up at her, a hint of wary suspicion tugging at a corner of his mind, "Why are you agreeing to this so easily?" He asked, "Neave told me that you hadn't agreed to a trade in decades."
Demetra simply shrugged her shoulders again and rolled up the sleeves on her plain, brown smock, "It would be fruitless to argue, if Katesch told you that I would help then it was going to happen one way or another. I don't see the point in fighting fate. Now come closer, please." She gestured for him to bend his head down.
Kai grimaced at her, a fleeting expression of disgust passing over his delicate features, "You don't need to extract them the same way that she passed them to me, do you?" He cringed, his eyes flicking down to her thin wrinkly lips with a shudder.
The Witch rolled her eyes and held her hand, palm up towards his head, "By the angels, I just need to touch your head boy. What do you take me for? I don't use my body. I am not Neave." She sneered around her name and Kai bit his lip to stop the soft laugh from slipping out.
The Witches appeared to have differing opinions of how to conduct business as well as their opinions towards humans themselves, with Demetra seemingly planted on the side of poorly concealed aversion and spite.
Yet Kai found that over the course of their short meeting, he had come to appreciate that about the wrinkly old Witch.
There was no pretence, no deceit. Her tone was sharp, her words blunt and cutting, but underneath it all, at least she was honest.
Kai bent his head and she placed her thin, pale hand flat against his forehead, murmuring a stream of unintelligible words underneath her breath in a language that he didn't understand.
As soon as she did so, her lips fluttering so fast that they were almost a blur, Kai felt strange.
He realised in that moment that the well of startling vitality and life that had been coursing through his veins had never actually receded. Instead his body and mind had simply grown accustomed to feeling it.
And now, as this pool of energy was slowly pulled from his very soul and into the palm of the Witches hand his legs grew weak, a startled gasp escaping his lips and a cold sweat broke out over his skin.
He could quite literally feel her draining life from his body, and it wasn't a pleasant sensation.
His chest throbbed painfully and his knees shook, hitting the floor before she was even finished.
But Demetra simply followed him down, still chanting, still pressing her palm flat to his head.
In the last moment, before she raised her hand and took it away, Kai had even felt a pang of deep, primal fear. What if she didn't stop? What if she kept going and drained him entirely?
An image of his skin turning thin and wrinkled, his eyes clouding with blindness and his spine hunching over like hers flashed in his mind.
But then it was over.
He gulped down a mouthful of musty air and shuddered. A strange sensation of weakness had washed over his entire body.
When he looked up, weakly raising his head, he nearly reeled back in shock.
For where there was a short, hunched over old hag with greying hair and deep bags beneath her hooded eyes just a moment before, there was now a beautiful, young woman with clear alabaster skin, almond-shaped eyes like two flints of piercing onyx black and full lips with a perfect cupid's bow.
Demetra pulled the pins from her hair and shook it free like a main of red fire shaking around her face with a wide grin.
And then, without a shred of shame or regard for the young, human man that was currently gaping at her in shock, she shrugged off the shapeless, drab dress that had been hanging loosely from her shoulders.
Kai slapped his hand over his eyes as she began cupping and grasping at her own slender frame, smiling brightly and turning her head back to inspect her firm behind, "Hello perky, it's been a while." She laughed, a clear, soft sound that was nothing like the rough, harsh grate of her previous tone.
"By the angels, Demetra! Could you put some bloody clothes on, please?" Kai snapped.
He wasn't a puritan towards nudity by any means, but a woman who was essentially a complete stranger to him suddenly stripping down to nothing in front of his eyes without warning had flustered him immensely, his ears burning hot and his face flushed red.
She huffed in annoyance, her sharp attitude seemingly unchanged by the transformation and Kai peeked out from between his fingers to look down at the floor and watch her feet padding across the room.
"Humans are no fun. Don't you understand I haven't seen my tits this perky in almost a century." She pouted, wrapping herself in a thin velvet robe of deep forest green.
Kai sighed in relief and dropped his hand, "Yeah, well, I didn't ask to see them you creepy, old hag." He glanced sideways at Basttet who had jumped down from the pile of books and leapt up onto the table, stretching on its back legs for her to lift the creature into her arms.
"See, at least someone here is happy to see me back to my perky glory." She cooed, scooping it into her arms and patting the black scales that ran across its torso with deep affection.
He rolled his eyes, "I think your old form suited your personality better. It was a closer match."
She stuck out her small, pink tongue at him with a sneer and waved her hand towards the door, "You can leave now, we're done here."
Kaius didn't need to be told twice, dusting off his legs from where they had buckled to the floor and making a beeline for the exit, he threw a swift word of thanks over his shoulder.
But before he stepped through it, Demetra caught the door with her hand and stopped him at the threshold.
"Ah, actually...one final thing, Kaius Seraphall." She grinned, her teeth perfectly straight and pristine white behind her full lips.
Kai repressed a shudder, the Ikett turning his head towards him with its eyes closed, "What?" He asked, hesitantly.
With the devious smile still plastered to her glowing, youthful face, Demetra slipped a smooth jade pebble into his pocket and stepped back, "You have a lot of years to waste. If you want to trade again then call me through the stone, no need for you to make the journey here. Turn it over in your fingers three times and I will come to you when you ask. The call alone will cost you six months." She noted, raising her finger in warning like a shady salesman that had just hiked their prices.
Kai nodded, grimly and turned aside, hurrying from the Witches Grove in the direction that she had indicated.
He had no intention of using that stone, or even staying behind another moment to bargain for a new form of shelter. He would sleep on the cold, hard ground if he had to.
And yet, it was perhaps nice to know that he had a Witch at his beck and call. Albeit a rude old hag of a Witch who would sap his lifespan away in exchange for her assistance, but, Kai wasn't picky.
He just hoped that the meeting with the Angel would be a little more pleasant.
Kaius trudged through the forest alone, ignoring the deep exhaustion and the steady, painful thrum from his shoulder.
'Just go to the next thing, and then the next, and the next...keep walking.'
If he only kept moving, then he wouldn't even need to think about what he had heard inside the Marsh of Spectres...
And at least he could no longer see those ominous, dark wings, hovering just out of sight.
'Silver linings.' He scoffed.
**